Freek Alblas donated his quartz collection to our Foundation archives, a few years ago

in progress,
state of affairs 20 June 2008

Introduction:
Mr Alblas was first employed in quartz crystal making in the 1950s and 1960s
at the Dutch PTT Radio
Laboratorium, situated in the Hague (Kazernestraat). Which had been moved later to the
new building of the Dr. Neher Laboratorium in Leidsendam. He early retired in 1988. Both institutions do not exist
anymore, like is for most European state owned telephone organisations*. The PTT Radio Lab. is
similar to British GPO Dollishill. The Dutch PTT
started in 1931 with making their own quartz resonators, after complains that
they could not
find an appropriate quartz crystal supplier and stopped finally doing so about
1980. However, the main bulk of quartz
production was already taken over by Philips, somewhere in the 1960s#.

*Such as, for example: Deutsche Bundespost now Deutsche Telekom,
British GPO became BT; Dutch PTT transformed into KPN-Telecom #The
Philips quartz branch was later soled off to Saronix (Doetinchem NL), which themselves
made bankruptcy about 2003/2004

The aim of this
page is, to give some credit to Mr. Alblas and his colleagues and to show some
aspects of their work done on quartz crystals by the former Dutch PTT. Like most state institutions, their work was comprehensive and
thorough, albeit, far too expensive to compete with commercial (industrial) quartz products.

Photo taken
in de loft (zolder) of the Radio Laboratorium at the Kazernestraat in the Hague,
somewhere mid 1950s.

Shown firstly,
a brief view of various types produced by Dutch PTT in the 1950s and 1960s. For
construction details one have to wait until say Autumn, when we have, Deo volente, copied some of
the production files.

On the far
right we see a synthetic row quartz bar (not yet cut), which kind is still
being used for basic crystal
production

The photo resolution is chosen such, that magnification
is well possible. You can simply double click on a photo and your local
photo-program should open the hyperlink automatically. This procedure is enhancing photo
quality and allows post magnification with less quality loss.

Please view
also the YouTube films made from the PTT demonstration apparatus, showing that
the piezo-electric
phenomenomis also having a mechanical aspect